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grumpeaches · 8 years

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run to you, love

Main characters: Bucky Barnes, Steve Rogers, Natasha Romanoff Main pairings: Buckynat Minor pairings: Romanogers, Stucky, Stuckynat Wordcount: 2,317 words

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He thinks something about having her pinned beneath him feels familiar, and when he closes his eyes he sees flashes of red hair against white sheets. But they’ve tried to kill each other too many times for that to make any sense; even if he can’t remember everything he’s ever done as the Winter Soldier, he remembers shooting her twice.

(And maybe there’s a part of him that doesn’t want to remember, because what kind of monster shoots the woman he loves?)

You could at least recognise me.

He turns the words over in his mind –– they make no sense to him, but there’s a part of him that feels like it should mean something. He knows who she is, knows that the fight should have lasted longer, knows that there are at least a dozen methods she could have employed to get out of his chokehold. Instead, she leaves him with a riddle.

(And maybe there’s a part of him that doesn’t want to remember, because what kind of monster shoots the woman he loves?)

And then she’s there, the last thing standing between them and the quinjet. He feels Steve tense, but no weapons are raised. He doesn’t hear what they say, because her words are back and she’s right there but he can’t remember and how is he supposed to remember something he’s not entirely sure even exists to be remembered in the first place?

She covers their escape, and he tries not to think about how her eyes had locked on his as she urged them to go, or the quiet resignation in her eyes, hidden behind steely resolve.

“Romanoff,” he breaks the silence with her name, and Steve startles a little before turning to him, “I think I knew her.”

“You shot her in Odessa,” Steve says, not accusatory but he thinks maybe there’s a little bit of anger in his tone.

He remembers now, how she hadn’t been his target, but he’d shot her anyway just because she was in the way and he had seen her as acceptable collateral damage. The memory makes him feel a little sick, but he shakes his head. “No… before that.”

Surprise flashes across Steve’s face, but it disappears as a frown settles in its place. He catches Steve’s gaze flicker towards his metal arm, and a combination of shame and hurt and anger flares up in him.

“That’s possible,” Steve sighs, head tilting slightly in the direction of his metal arm, “The red star – your main handlers were Russian?”

“Yeah,” he says, confused for a moment on what that had to do with anything before it hits him. “She’s ex-KGB.”

There’s a little girl – no older than twelve – with hair as red as the star on his arm, snapping the neck of another little girl before looking to him. And then he’s sparring with the same little girl, except she’s a little older, and she actually manages to flip him onto his back. There’s a proud little smile on her face, befitting of the Red Room’s best. She’s a young woman now, and they’re no longer teacher and student. They’re partners, equals, and she’s the only one he trusts to watch his back.

And in the quiet of the night, when there’s no one around to see, they come together as man and woman. Each time he kisses her like it’s the last chance he will ever get to, until one day it actually is.

It’s a strange sensation, disjointed memories coming together. He remembers how it had taken more than twenty men to drag him from her, he remembers the way she had screamed and cried as they made her watch them wipe him. But more than that, he remembers not remembering her, and he remembers the way her face had crumpled when he had looked at her and seen a stranger.

“I shot her,” he murmurs, and he remembers pulling the trigger, he remembers her cry of pain, he remembers–– “I shot my Natalia.”

And then he leans over and throws up.

He’s shaking afterwards, and Steve cleans the mess up quietly. He wills himself not to think about how she’d been within his reach and he’d let her slip right through his fingers.

“Always had a thing for redheads, huh?” The jibe comes out of nowhere, and it startles him into laughing.

Steve disposes of the dirty towels, before placing a hand on his shoulder. “We deal with this, and then we go back for her,” he says, lips pulling into a tired smile.

He nods, and the thought of seeing her again when it’s all over is the only reason he manages to refocus on Zemo.

He knows he deserves Tony Stark’s anger, and part of him wants to let Howard’s son kill him, because then he wouldn’t have to live with the knowledge of all the things he’d done as the Winter Soldier. But he remembers the look in Natalia’s eyes, the hurt despite the casual words, and he wants to live long enough to hold her again, to tell her I remember now, I remember you, I will always remember you.

And so he fights back, fights to see her again. When the edges of his vision get go fuzzy, she is the last thing he thinks of before it goes dark.

When he opens his eyes again, he’s back in the quinjet, Steve sitting across him, leaning forward with his elbows propped on his knees and his face in his hands as the Black Panther flies. He draws Steve’s attention as he sits up, and there’s relief in his oldest friend’s face before the weariness returns.

He wants to ask if they’re going to Natalia now, but he looks at Steve again and he falters. “Where are we going?” he asks instead.

“To Wakanda,” the Blank Panther replies, and his attention turns to the man who had seemed hell bent on killing him just hours ago.

He turns sharply to Steve then, although the words still seem firmly lodged in his throat. “She called earlier,” Steve says, answering the unspoken question, “told her where we’re headed and she said she’d meet us there.”

“Did you––” he starts, but Steve shakes his head before he finishes the sentence.

“I figured she’d want to hear it from you.”

Not I figured you’d want to tell her yourself, but because it’s what she would want. “You love her,” he says, and even though Steve flinches at that, he doesn’t deny it.

Steve straightens up, and lets out a sad little laugh, but the smile he offers is genuine. “Can you blame me?” he asks, arms spread open, palms up, before dragging a hand over his face.

“No,” he says, and that’s that.

It’s another ten hours until they land in Wakanda, and his hand shakes the entire time, too acutely aware of her absence. The scientists have just finished repairs on his metal arm when Steve appears in the doorway.

“She’s here?” he asks, and his voice trembles, fear and hope swirling in the cold blue of his eyes.

Steve nods, and he smiles, still tired but not as strained as before. “I haven’t even seen her yet. Thought I’d come get you first.”

And after he puts his shirt back on, he walks up to Steve and pulls him into a hug. Even though he’s itching to see Natalia again, he knows nothing will change how important Steve is to him, that everything is easier (not easy, necessarily, but definitely easier) with Steve by his side.

“Our girl’s waiting,” Steve says, voice thick with emotion before there’s a choked laugh. “Don’t tell her I called her that.”

“Okay, but you owe me.” The retort comes easily, and when Steve beams at him, he thinks this is how he knows he’s doing good.

He lets Steve lead the way to the hangar, and hangs back as Natasha walks up to Steve and greets him with a hug. There’s a tug in his chest, watching how they come together so easily, but it’s not bitterness or jealousy, he realises with a start. He’s content, because no matter what happens between him and Natalia from now on, he knows she loves Steve too much to leave either of them, and he thinks having them in his life is more important than having them in the way he wants to.

But then she’s pulling away from the hug, and Steve is nudging her towards him and he almost forgets how to breathe when her eyes find his. She’s beautiful, he’s always known that, but he’s enamoured all the same.

“Natashenka,” he breathes, and the way her face fractures is the only way he can tell that she’s heard him.

“James,” she says, and then she’s taking one step, two step, three steps towards him and he moves to meet her halfway, the two of them colliding and holding on. “You remembered.”

“I remember it all, Natalia,” he says, hands tracing her face, and when she closes her eyes and tilts her head back, he leans down and presses kisses against the fading bruises on her throat. “You were the one good thing in it all.”

She opens her eyes then, and he can see the surprise plain in her eyes. Her expression is so unguarded, so open, so unlike the façade that she presents to the world that it almost makes him cry. It takes him back to another time, when even though everything she was ever taught told her that what they had was wrong, it never stopped her from looking at him as if he was the only good in her life.

(There were never any declarations of love back then, but he never doubted that she loved him – the way she bared her throat to him with so much trust spoke volumes.

My heart, she had whispered in the dark one night, unflinching as the cold metal of his hand brushed over creamy skin, take it – it’s yours.)

“We’re gonna be okay?” she asks, turning her head and pressing a kiss against the cold metal of his palm, and there is forgiveness for all the times he’s hurt her in the curve of her lips.

“No,” he answers honestly, and it earns him a laugh from Natalia. He smiles at her, and then looks over her shoulder at Steve, who’s smiling too. “But I’ll be damned if we don’t try.”

She turns slightly, her eyes following his gaze until they land on Steve, and she holds a hand out to him in invitation. He raises his eyebrows in response, but she only grins, fingers curling as if physically tugging him closer and it does the trick.

“People are going to think you have a thing for fucked up ex-assassins,” she says as Steve comes close enough for her to loop an arm around his waist.

Steve laughs, wrapping his arms around the both of them. His forehead is pressed against Steve’s and Natalia is firmly wedged between the two of them. He thinks he likes this – a lot.

“Let them,” he says. And even with his eyes closed he can hear the grin in Steve’s voice as he adds, “They’re probably right anyway.”

Natalia snickers at that, and manages to wiggle her way out, taking them both by the arm. “C’mon boys, time for a tour?”

They get lost wandering the hallways of the facility though because he and Steve hadn’t arrived that much earlier, and most of that head start had been spent in the medical bay. They get a few odd looks, and he understands that the sight of three of the world’s most dangerous people giggling like teenagers must be strange, but Natalia and Steve are laughing and he’s too endeared by the sight to feel self-conscious about the attention they’re getting.

He’s not the Bucky that Steve had known seventy years ago, or the James that Natalia had fallen in love with back in Russia. But the Steve and Natalia with him now are not the same Steve and Natalia he remembers either, and it’s okay because he loves them regardless. It’s almost ironic, that he’s spent so long running away, but now he doesn’t think he could bear to be apart from them.

It takes him a few moments to realise that his companions are trying to get his attention, and he blinks as his mind returns to the present.

“Oh good,” Natalia says when the faraway look in his eyes fades, “Thought I might have to administer cognitive recalibration for a moment there.”

She’s only teasing, but he winces because even with second rate super soldier serum in his system, Natalia knows how to make her blows hurt.

“Something bothering you?” Steve asks, and although he makes a show of frowning at Natalia in disapproval, the corners of his lips twitch in amusement.

He shakes his head, merely bumping his shoulder against Natalia’s and sending her crashing into Steve’s side. “No, just happy.”

“Ugh, so sappy,” Natalia retorts. Her face is scrunched up in mock disgust, and he laughs as he leans in to press a loud, sloppy, wet kiss on her cheek.

“You love it,” he quips right back, and then laughs even harder when Steve joins in the kiss attack and Natalia yells at them both to stop ruining her image.

(Two weeks later, the rest of the team walk in on them in the middle of a play fight – he has his hands under Natalia’s shirt, and she’s pressed against Steve’s back, one of her hands just barely sliding underneath the waistband of his pants. It’s a compromising position, to say the least, and even Natalia can’t come up with a believable excuse.

Sam laughs for five minutes straight, and both Clint and Scott shoot them dirty looks as they place twenty-dollar bills onto Sam’s waiting palm. Wanda merely beams at them – bless her heart – and herds the guys out of the room.)

#marvel #buckynat #romanogers #stucky #stuckynat #steve rogers #bucky barnes #natasha romanoff #written a while back #i just never cross-posted to tumblr #and i figured i should #momo writes

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grumpeaches · 8 years

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burning in paradise

Main characters: Kirishima Touka, Kirishima Ayato Main pairings: Ayatouka Wordcount: 2,289 words Warning: Brother-Sister incest (non-sexual intimacy, kissing) Note: Part of maybe i don't want heaven series

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He dives into the water, laughing when Touka calls him a show off. He beckons for her to join him, and she does, slicing cleanly into the water and surfacing right in front of him. “I think that’s a solid 8.5,” he teases, closing his eyes for the inevitable splash to come, because he knows Touka.

So when he feels the water crash into his face, he only laughs harder. “Fuck off,” Touka retorts, even though when he opens his eyes again the first thing he sees is her grin, “That was at least a 9.”

Even though he’s the younger sibling, Ayato has grown to become the stronger of the two of them. So when he slumps over, with barely enough strength to hold himself up, Touka knows that they’re in trouble.

The odds are against them –– the odds are always against them, the cynic in Touka reminds her, but she’ll save her bitterness for another time; perhaps when she and Ayato aren’t at imminent risk of being killed. There’s still some fight left in her yet, but even someone with as much pride as her knows that she cannot win.

Not when she’s hurt too, not when she’s outnumbered, not when fighting means taking her attention off Ayato.

So she does the next best thing –– she picks Ayato up and she runs.

She’s a lot faster than those humans, and it’s not hard to lose them, but even as the distance between them and the doves grows, the gnawing worry in her chest doesn’t ease. Ayato’s out cold now, having fallen limp against her the moment she’d wrapped her arms around him.

Her fingers curl into his side a little harder, and she tries not to think about the wetness seeping through his shirt. There’s a low whine from him when her nails dig into his flesh, and even though there’s a spike of guilt for having caused him more pain – no matter how insignificant – she’s relieved enough to hear the sound of his voice that she laughs.

She has to pause on a rooftop because she’s laughing so hard that her body shakes with it. The gravity of their situation finally hits her, and she sinks to her knees, letting Ayato fall onto her lap as she cradles him to her. There’s an edge of hysteria to her laughter, and she buries her face in Ayato’s hair in an attempt to muffle the sound, but all it does is make her cry instead.

They’re holed up in an abandoned apartment when Ayato finally comes to, and it takes Touka all of two seconds to cross the threshold to kneel by his side, palming his face, his shoulders, his body to make sure that he’s nicely healed up. Ayato chases her hands with his own, bringing them back up to his face and pressing them against his own cheeks.

“I’m okay,” he breathes, and they’re so close that the whisper glides over her skin, leaving tingles in their wake.

She leans in––

––and tugs his head down at the last moment so that her lips land firmly on his forehead.

When she pulls away, she thinks she sees a shadow of disappointment in his eyes. She doesn’t comment on it, because she knows her own expression is a reflection of his. Ayato says nothing either.

“Are you sure about this?” Ayato asks, and Touka thinks she might have made fun of the little crease that’s appeared between his eyebrows if she wasn’t so terrified.

She swallows the truth, and nods her head. “Yeah,” she says, sounding much braver than she actually feels. She’s asking so much of Ayato already; she can’t burden him with her fears on top of it.

He cups her face then, and she’s struck by how big his hands are. He’s taller too, broader around the shoulders, the softness of his child’s body replaced by sharp planes of muscle.

“I’m sorry.” The words slip out before she can stop them. “I know you don’t want to do this.”

“You’re right, I don’t,” he admits, and Touka can’t help but wince. She knows how he feels, but hearing him confirm it makes her feel even worse for putting him in that position in the first place. “But I don’t want it to be anyone else but me either.”

“I don’t trust anyone else when it comes to you.”

Touka knows it’s not healthy, Ayato’s fixation on being the only person she turns to, but she’d be a hypocrite if she were to ever tell him to let her lean on other people for a change. Because as much as she knows it’s wrong, she also knows how he feels, because she feels the same.

Besides, it’s not like she wants anybody but Ayato to take care of her.

So maybe their relationship is a little fucked up, she’ll admit, but there’s really nothing about their lives that isn’t fucked up. And Ayato is the only spot of happiness in her life, so she really doesn’t give a fuck what other people make of them. Ayato presses his forehead against hers, and they stand like that for a few heartbeats, just breathing each other in.

This time they’re in a half-demolished apartment complex, having made a bed out of some old blankets laid down on the bare concrete. When Ayato pulls away, he gently nudges Touka towards the blankets. Wordlessly, she walks over, pausing only for a second to tug her shirt off before lying down, cheek pressed against the musty fabric. She feels Ayato straddle her lower back, knees on either side of her hips and hands gripping her waist.

Touka exhales slowly, and then unleashes her kagune (slowly, because the last thing she wants is to hurt Ayato). Immediately, she feels his hands on it, moving carefully, methodically, until the tension in her shoulders eases. She can’t help the shudder that works its way down her spine when he presses his lips against her wing, and maybe the way her eyes flutter shut at his ministrations is wrong, but Ayato’s mouth feels like heaven and god the way his hands move across her back feels so incredibly good too.

She gasps, twisting the blankets in her fists when he bites into her flesh. It hurts, but she’s surprised at the fact that pain isn’t the only sensation she’s feeling. It burns as he tears off chunks of her kagune with his teeth, but it also burns a different way where his fingers rub circles onto her skin. As he wears it down close to the bone, as his lips brush against the skin of her shoulder blades, he reaches for her hand. Ayato’s almost lying completely on top of her now, and she lets go of the blankets to clasp his hand, their fingers intertwining without thought.

It takes her a while to get her breathing back to normal, and a little more to realise that Ayato’s stopped moving. “Ayato?” she breathes, rubbing a thumb across his knuckles.

He doesn’t reply, but he does bury his face in her hair, his nose pressed against the little junction where her neck slopes into her shoulder. Touka wants to turn around, wants to see her baby brother, wants to push his hair out of his eyes and tell him that she’s okay and she’s sorry she asked him to do this and she loves him, so, so much.

When Ayato finally gets up and leaves, Touka doesn’t follow. She sits up and watches him go, pretending that she doesn’t still feel the ghost of his touch on her skin. She’s not sure if the gentle brush of his lips over the nape of her neck had been intentional, but she knows he’ll never tell her and she’ll never ask.

On the days when the loss of her parents stings less, Touka will admit that there are perks to being street orphans. She remembers being soft and kind and gentle once upon a time, eager to learn and compliant. Now she’s only soft for Ayato. Now she revels in her freedom, in not having anyone to tell her what to do.

So when Ayato suggests breaking into the swimming complex, there’s approval in the wicked curve of her lips. It’s been a while since the last time they’ve done this, and it’s apparent when Touka strips off her clothes. She’s still petite, but Ayato sees even the slightest curves that he knows weren’t there the last time they went for a midnight swim.

But even as he maps the new changes, he doesn’t leer. He knows that most of the world would label the love he feels for his sister wrong, or impure, and he doesn’t want to prove them right. He loves her more than he should, yes, and he loves her in ways a brother probably shouldn’t love his sister, but he refuses to let his feelings for her be reduced to carnal desires.

He goes quiet, pretends to think, before splashing at her and then swimming away. It doesn’t take long for him to feel a hand grab his leg, and then suddenly she’s wrapped herself around him completely, weighing him down enough to make him stop and try to shake her off.

They play like that for a while, chasing each other around the pool, occasionally climbing onto each other to hitch a ride. By the time the climb out of the pool, they’re out of breath, both from the swimming and from laughing so hard. They’re dripping water everywhere, and when Touka slips on the wet tiles, she and Ayato reach for each other at the same time and they end up collapsing into a tangle of limbs by the side of the pool.

“Sorry,” Touka says, but she’s laughing too hard to sound anything close to sincere. She extracts herself from his arms when her laughter finally fades to soft giggles, lying on her side next to him, elbow propped against the floor and chin in her palm.

Ayato mimics her posture, also lying on his side so that they’re face to face. His hair falls onto his face, and Touka’s touch is gentle when she brushes her fingertips across his forehead, pushing his hair away from his eyes. He expects her to pull away, but she doesn’t. Her hand hovers over his face, and he reaches for it, bringing it down to his lips to press a kiss against her palm.

And then he leans forward, slotting their lips together –– it’s quick, and it barely counts as a kiss, but Ayato feels electricity thrum in his veins anyway. When he pulls back, he expects Touka to brush it off, as they always do whenever they toe the line of appropriate actions between siblings.

He doesn’t expect her to pull her hand out of his grasp, doesn’t expect her hand to snake to the back of his neck to keep him from moving too far away, doesn’t expect her to close the distance between them once more. But that’s exactly what she does, and she keeps their lips joined longer than he did, long enough for him to tentatively return the kiss. It’s his first kiss, and he reckons it’s her first as well; they move slowly, carefully, exploring this new facet of their relationship with tenderness.

It’s only when they separate that the weight of their actions settles between them, and the silence is thick with unsaid words. “Are we going to pretend this never happened?” Ayato asks when he finally dares to speak. The magic of the moment still lingers, but reality’s starting to seep in.

Touka’s quiet still, and even though they’re still kind of leaning towards each other on their sides awkwardly, Ayato doesn’t dare to move for fear of startling Touka into running from him. The silence stretches out, and Touka sits up. Ayato starts to get up too, but she places a hand on his chest, gently easing him to lie down on his back. He’s not sure where she’s going with this, but he doesn’t protest, letting her push him onto the floor while she remains sitting.

“Do you want to pretend this never happened?” she finally speaks up, throwing his question back at him.

“No,” he replies almost immediately, and maybe he should be ashamed of how quickly the word leaves his mouth but he sees the corner of Touka’s mouth twitch and he thinks he can live with being embarrassingly needy if it amuses her.

She cups his face, leaning down to connect their mouths again. “We’re going to hell,” she remarks, her lips brushing against his with every word she breathes.

Ayato’s hands find her face, and he pushes her away just enough for him to look her in the eyes. “At least we’ll be together,” he says. He’s being serious, so Touka knows that she really shouldn’t laugh, but the sentiment is so ridiculously sweet and she is so warm on the inside that the happiness just spills out in the form of laughter.

He doesn’t take offence to that though, merely rolling his eyes at her and pushing her back a little more so that he can get up. It’s almost light out, so they dress themselves and slip out of the swimming complex before they get caught. Touka slips her hand into Ayato’s, and he feels a little bolder when no one they pass on the streets pays them any attention.

“I’ll see you in hell,” he leans over to whisper.

Touka laughs and she laughs and she laughs.

(People finally take notice of them then, but Ayato finds that he doesn’t really care after all.)

#tokyo ghoul #kirishima touka #kirishima ayato #ayatouka #kirishima siblings #incest cw #maybe i don't want heaven au #i just wanna say #i do not encourage real life incest #if you find ayatouka as anything more than siblings gross #that's totally okay!!#just don't read this #and also don't send me nasty messages #i just wanted to explore their dynamics beyond canon

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